11/22/63: A Novel

We approached the intersection of North Pearl and Ross Avenue at eleven-thirty, right around the time Kennedy’s 707 would be rolling to a stop near the official greeters… including, of course, the woman with the bouquet of red roses. The street corner ahead was dominated by the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe. On the steps, below a statue of the saint with her arms outstretched, sat a man with wooden crutches on one side and an enamel kitchen pot on the other. Propped against the

pot was a sign reading I AM CRIPPLE UP BAD! PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN BE A GOOD SAMARIAN GOD LOVES YOU.

“Where are your crutches, Jake?”

“Back at Eden Fallows, in the bedroom closet.”

“You forgot your crutches?”

Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren’t they?

“I haven’t been using them that much lately. For short distances, I’m pretty much okay.” This sounded marginally better than admitting that the main thing on my mind had been getting the hell away from the little rehab cluster before Sadie arrived.

“Well, you could sure use a pair now.”

She ran ahead with enviable fleetness and spoke to the beggar on the church steps. By the time I limped up, she was dickering with him. “A set of crutches like that costs nine dollars, and you want fifty for one?”

“I need at least one to get home,” he said reasonably. “And your friend looks like he needs one to get anywhere. ”

“What about all that God loves you, be a good Samaritan stuff?”

“Well,” the beggar said, thoughtfully rubbing his whiskery chin, “God does love you, but I’m just a poor old cripple fella. If you don’t like my terms, make like the Pharisee and pass by on the other side. That’s what I’d do.”

“I bet you would. What if I just snatched them away, you money-grubbing thing?”

“I guess you could, but then God wouldn’t love you anymore,” he said, and burst out laughing. It was a remarkably cheerful sound for a man who was crippled up bad. He was doing better in the dental department than the Studebaker cowboy, but not a whole hell of a lot.

“Give him the money,” I said. “I only need one.”

“Oh, I’ll give him the money. I just hate being screwed.”

“Lady, that’s a shame for the male population of planet Earth, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Watch your mouth,” I said. “That’s my fiancee you’re talking about.” It was eleven-forty now.

The beggar took no notice of me. He was eyeing Sadie’s wallet. “There’s blood on that. Did you cut yourself shaving?”

“Don’t try out for the Sullivan show just yet, sweetheart, Alan King you’re not.” Sadie produced the ten she’d flashed at oncoming traffic, plus two twenties. “There,” she said as he took them. “I’m broke. Are you satisfied?”

“You helped a poor crippled man,” the beggar said. “ You’re the one who ought to be satisfied.”

“Well, I’m not!” Sadie shouted. “And I hope your damn old eyes fall out of your ugly head!”

The beggar gave me a sage guy-to-guy look. “Better get her home, Sunny Jim, I think she’s gonna start on her monthly right t’irectly.”

I put the crutch under my right arm-people who’ve been lucky with their bones think you’d use a single crutch on the injured side, but that’s not the case-and took Sadie’s elbow with my left hand. “Come on. No time.”

As we walked away, Sadie slapped her jeans-clad rump, looked back over her shoulder, and cried: “Kiss it!”

The beggar called: “Bring it back and bend it in my direction, honeylove, that you get for free!”

10

We walked down North Pearl… or rather, Sadie walked and I crutched. It was a hundred times better with the crutch, but there was no way we could make the intersection of Houston and Elm before twelve-thirty.

Up ahead was a scaffolding. The sidewalk went beneath it. I steered Sadie across the street.

“Jake, why in the world -”

“Because it’d fall on us. Take my word for it.”

“We need a ride. We really need… Jake? Why are you stopping?”

I stopped because life is a song and the past harmonizes. Usually those harmonies meant nothing (so I thought then), but every once in awhile the intrepid visitor to the Land of Ago can put one to use. I prayed with all my heart that this was one of those times.

Parked at the corner of North Pearl and San Jacinto was a 1954 Ford Sunliner convertible. Mine had been red and this one was midnight blue, but still… maybe…

I hurried to it and tried the passenger door. Locked. Of course. Sometimes you caught a break, but outright freebies? Never.

“Are you going to jump the ignition?”

I had no idea how to do that, and suspected it was probably harder than they made it look on Bourbon Street Beat. But I knew how to raise my crutch and slam the armpit cradle repeatedly against the window until it broke into a crack-glaze and sagged inward. No one looked at us, because there was no one on the sidewalk. All the action was to the southeast. From there we could hear the surf-roar of the crowd now gathering on Main Street in anticipation of President Kennedy’s arrival.